The lamentation of a good man.
I. OVER THE RELIGIOUS DEGENERACY OF HIS AGE. Not merely for himself, but as the representative of the godly remnant of Judah, Habakkuk expostulates with Jehovah concerning the wickedness of the times in which he lived. The picture he sets before Jehovah is one of deep national corruption, such as existed in the days of Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 20:8; Jeremiah 22:3, Jeremiah 22:13-17). A picture of wickedness.
1. Great.
2. Public. It was not merely a degeneracy, eating its way secretly into the vitals of the nation; the disease had already come to the surface. Vice and irreligion were not practised in private. Iniquity flaunted its robes openly in the eyes of passers by. The prophet saw it, looked upon it, felt himself surrounded by it. Spoiling and violence were before him; and sinners of every description around him.
3. Presumptuous. It was wickedness perpetrated, not merely against God's Law, but by God's covenanted people, in the face of remonstrances from God's prophets, and under the eye of God himself. The prophet states that Jehovah as well as he had beheld the wickedness complained of.
4. Inveterate. It was not a sudden outburst of moral and spiritual corruption, but a long continued and deeply rooted manifestation of national degeneracy, which had often sent the prophet to his knees, and caused him to cry for Divine interposition.
II. OVER THE SEEMING INDIFFERENCE OF GOD.
1. A frequent phenomenon. During the long antediluvian period Jehovah, apparently without concern, allowed mankind to degenerate; though he saw that the Wickedness of man was great in the earth (Genesis 6:5), it was not till one man only remained righteous before him that he interposed with the judgment of a flood. From the era of the Flood downwards he "suffered all nations to walk in their own ways" (Acts 14:16). Job (Job 34:12) observed this to be the method of the Divine procedure in his day, Asaph in his (Psalms 1:1-6:21), Habakkuk in his; and today nothing can be more apparent than that it is not a necessary part of Heaven's plan that "sentence against an evil work" should be "executed speedily."
2. A perplexing mystery. That God cannot be indifferent to sin, to the wickedness of nations or to the transgressions of individuals, is self-evident; otherwise he could not be God (Psalms 11:7; Psalms 111:9; Psalms 145:17; Isaiah 57:15; 1 Peter 1:15; Revelation 4:8). But that, loving righteousness and hating iniquity, he should seem to make no effort to protect, vindicate, strengthen, and diffuse the one, or to punish, restrain, and overthrow the other,—this is what occasions trouble to religious souls reflecting on the course of providence (Job 21:7; Psalms 73:2). The solution of the problem can only be that, on the one hand, he deems it better that righteousness should be purified, tested, and established by contact with evil, while, on the other hand, it seems preferable to his wisdom and love that wickedness should have free scope to reveal its true character, and ample opportunity either to change its mind or to justify its final overthrow (see homily on verses 12-19).
III. OVER THE MANIFEST FRUITLESSNESS OF HIS PRAYERS. An experience:
1. Strange. Habakkuk had cried long and earnestly to Jehovah about the wickedness of his countrymen. If rivers of waters ran not down his eyes because they kept not Jehovah's Law, as the psalmist tells us was the case with him (Psalms 119:136), and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 9:1) wished that it could have been with him, long processions of greenings ascended from his bosom to the throne of God on that very account. Doubtless, also, he expostulated with Jehovah about his seeming indifference, saying, "How long, O Lord, will this wickedness prevail? and how long wilt thou be silent?" Yet was there "no voice, nor any that answered him," any more than if he bad been a worshipper of Baal (1 Kings 18:26); and this although Jehovah was preeminently the Hearer of prayer (Psalms 65:2), and had invited his people to call upon him in the day of trouble (Psalms 1:1-6:15).
2. Common. It is not wicked men alone whose prayers are denied—men like Saul (1 Samuel 28:6), and the inhabitants of Judah in the days of Isaiah (Isaiah 1:15) and of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 11:14), but good men like Job (Job 30:20) and David (Psalms 22:2) as well. As the Syro-Phoenician woman cried after Jesus, and was answered never a word (Matthew 15:23), so many prayers ascend from the hearts of God's people to which, for a time at least, no response returns.
3. Valuable. Fitful to test the faith and sincerity of the petitioner, it is also admirably calculated to teach him the sovereignty of God in grace as well as in nature, to show him that, while God distinctly engages to answer prayer, he undertakes to do so only in his own time and way.
Learn:
1. That no good man can be utterly indifferent to the moral and spiritual character of the age in which he lives.
2. That good men should bear the highest interests of their country before God upon their hearts in prayer.
3. That good men should never lose faith in two things—that God is on the side of righteousness, even when iniquity appears to triumph; and that God hears their prayers, even when he delays to answer or appears to deny them.